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BY JOSEPH W. SANDERSON, D. D. ;| 



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Memories and Memoranda of 
Forty and Fifty Years Ago 



By 
JOSEPH W. SANDERSON, D. D. 

(Former Capt. Battery "G," 3rd Pa. Arty.) 



Cincinnati, OIilo 

Lotz Printing and Stationery Co. 

1910 



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0ift Mrs. Ifenry S. Teno. FeS. 16, 1&^ 



To MY FRIEND 

John Cleves Short, 

Walnut Hills, 

Cincinnati, Ohio. 

You have actually succeeded in getting this that I 
have often promised myself to write out. I wish it 
\vere plainer; be assured it could not be truer. You in 
your Kentucky lineage may not have always heard this 
other story. 

Affectionately yours, 

Joseph W. Sanderson, D. D., 

Once Capt. Bat'y "G," 3d Pa. Arty. 



My Dear Cleves: 

When one draws near to the "three score and ten" 
the mind grows philosophic as a sign thereof, whatever 
may have been its bent or bias. 

I have preached to others, to write their own biog- 
raphy. No editor may ever use the bkie pencil on it; 
no publisher may bid for it; but if for no other reason 
than to bring home a great truth, viz. : that a wonder- 
ful Providence has been in and through it all. This I 
know and am persuaded of; though confessing, I have 
never before began to write my past. It was simply 
when I had preached to others, yet failed to practice. 

My early manhood, I am sure, was lived in the most 
eventful period of this, and by that token, of any na- 
tion — the era of the great Civil War. 

May I tell you the story? Setting naught down on 
the bitterness of the days, now happily overpast for- 
ever, nor in the foolishness of either of extreme youth 
or of dotage. 

I was born January lo, 1839, which at this date, 
April 1907, gives me fortunately the state of mind 
vivid as to the past, and clear as to much of what en- 
tered into well known history. 

I think I can call myself an American, of a fairly 
good type; that is, of native birth, of Christian parent- 
age; trained to high ideals of patriotism and the civic 
virtues, as these were urged north of the Mason and 



Dixon's line. My mother was of Quaker ancestry; 
my father of Scotch-Irish extraction ; both of Philadel- 
phia, He was an old line Whig, naturally a Federalist, 
and not of any State's rights political predilection. 

My youth, as it bordered on early manhood in the 
closing fifties, took easily to the stir of the political 
movements of that distinctive period. I think there 
was in the youngsters with me of that day more of a 
deepening of political reasons than the partisanship of 
earlier or more recent years in the young men approach- 
ing the exercise of their franchise. True, it was a day 
when men took their religion and their politics more 
seriously than customarily. Commonly, it is noted, 
that "a man gets his religion from his mother, and his 
politics from his father." In that day the younger men 
apart from their impressionable natures were less open 
to parental bias ; they were open eyed witnesses of the 
great crisis near at hand. Though none in all the land 
dreamed the fullness of things soon to be the talk of 
the world. 

Let me now state in all soberness the sum of the 
matter, and whatever may follow will jnot prove it 
otherwise. 

1. There was a growing need for more slave terri- 
tory ; warranted or unwarranted, as the case might be. 

2. The contrary interpretations of the Constitu- 
tion, as to the jurisdiction of the states, were of them- 
selves purely academic questions. 

3. Slavery was, of course, a matter of state regula- 
tion ; an institution, apart from any moral phase of 
the individual state. 



4- Whether there was a conspirarcy to force the 
issue, at all hazards, to meet this demand for slavery 
extension, is a fact that can be inferred, though not es- 
tablished. It looked that way then to me. It seems so 
now in the march of events. 

5. Out of the academic question of State rights 
came the theory, long held by many in secret, though 
never forcefully advanced, of the right of a state to 
secede. (Observe it is a dead theory to-day. There is 
not a state in the Union that would withdraw if it 
could. Indeed, it would fight to remain within the 
Union.) 

So the "Right to Secede" was made to have an un- 
due value in the insistence on more territory for 
slavery. As it is totally a dead issue now, it looks as 
if it were made a stalking horse to gain an unholy end. 

As I am in this outlining the motives and move- 
ments of the closing "fifties" — and before I try to nar- 
rate anything personal in the war that soon came on — 
let me ask you to weigh the probabilities that the Civil 
War was the outcome of a conspiracy. This, then, re- 
lieves the question of its old time fierce controversy 
about slavery, pro and con, and relieves the masses of 
the people North and South of the awful responsibility 
for that war. Men sided rapidly on either side of 
the debate who would have gravely refused to array 
themselves against each other in battle. 

Though bitterness long indulged in sooner or later 
terminates in the deadly insult — and then the fatal 
blow. 



6. Slavery, while it was the one uppermost theme 
in the preceding days, was not the issue in nor the out- 
come of the war. 

That institution died as an accident of the war. It 
was extinguished as a military necessity, after the states 
•in arms against the Union had been formally and 
solemnly warned by President Lincoln, that if on a 
certain future date they were yet arrayed, an emancipa- 
tion proclamation would be issued by the Commander 
of the Army and Navy of the U. S. 'The Civil War 
was for the Union as against those who would destroy 
the National structure. Of course there was en- 
gendered such a sectional hostility as to be called an 
"Irrepressible Conflict." Bad blood, such as it was, 
had to be treated surgically before there could be whole 
and wholesome conditions. (I have sometimes thought 
that the fathers who coined the preamble to the Con- 
stitution in those words, "In order to form a more per- 
fect Union," either wrote it better than they realized, 
or were prophetic of the times these very days in which 
we live — when "a more perfect Union" exists ; thanks 
be to the Most High!) 

But what could you expect when rabid Abolitionists 
and equally rabid "Fire-eaters" were the fierce con- 
troversialists in those former days? Both are silent 
now, and forever. 

Before President Buchanan's administration there 
was a very slow growth in the northern states of the 
Free Soil party. So slow were men to perceive the 
quiet aggression of the leaders moving for slave terri- 
tory. But the four years then were astir through the 



10 



discovery of this motive. Thousands who were passive 
on the question of slavery, per se, became remonstrants 
against the extension in the newly formed states. 

The approach of a presidential election in i860 left 
only an almost unperceptible handful of men without 
a conviction on either side. It seemed almost too late^, 
to plead for another cause, be it ever so holy, as Union, 
to hold its place in the public mind. On the election of 
Abraham Lincoln, in November, i860, there was a 
pause, an end *of the former controversy. It was like 
the etherization of the patient before moving him into 
the operating room. In the North there was no 
thought of war, even at the news of one state after 
another in the South moving by legislative conclusion 
to withdraw from the Union. Yet war was by them 
determined to effect what their states had decreed. 

I was drawn into the military spirit, such as it was 
in the North, without one thought of actual or possible 
war — just as our young men enroll themselves in their 
National Guards, for the fancy of the thing, its dis- 
ciplinary and social advantages. 

Not even in face of news from the South of war- 
like activities going on was the stern fact believed. In- 
deed, their preparedness for and the Northern in- 
credulity about any possible strife, accounts largely for 
our continued defeats in almost every battle early in 
the war. We were slow to learn the trade of soldier- 
ing, and we paid the penalty of our unbelief. 

It may seem to you incredible that when the flag 
was fired on in Charleston harbor, April, 1861, the 
word was as a "bolt out of the blue," as swift as the 



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formation of a cyclone, and as awful. I never knew, 
or had I not known it, could have dreamed it was pos- 
sible to move the entire North as that one insult to the 
flag, and the blow at the life of the Nation. It was al- 
most incredible ; but it revealed how complete the con- 
spiracy was. To think that an institution, that had 
never been assailed save by theorists and self-con- 
stituted philanthropists, should now become the pre- 
vening cause of the costliest,' bloodiest, bitterest war in 
modern history ! 

In an hour slavery ceased to be even deemed an 
issue or a factor. 

The government could have had a half million 
young lives ; in fact, they offered themselves and were 
refused. The powers at Washington were so sure that 
sixty or eighty thousand men could within ninety days 
march through to the Gulf and smash armed opposi- 
tion, that only these were accepted. I saw men actual- 
ly cry with vexation at being denied their patriotism. 
I was as elated at being chosen as if I had received a 
high command. 

On April 24, '61, I was mustered into the Com- 
monwealth Artillery of Pennsylvania as a high private, 
and set to the task of keeping little Delaware from 
joining the stampede of the Southern states under their 
strange flag and coiistitution. This, it is pleasant to 
narrate, was successfully accomplished, and then after 
three months, when the magnitude of the Confederate 
idea began to be believed, the authorities at Washing- 
ton were eager to enlist men to any extent, and before 
four years received over a million and a half of soldiers. 



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It fully needed that many to win out against the 
"other American" soldiers and their stout, magnificent 
bravery. 

But remember, it not only required an overwhelm- 
ing force, but the other side were fighting on "interior 
lines" and we had to surround them. It was a vast 
area, and a big job. It took four full years to exhaust 
the other side — yet what could you expect when you 
recall their Americanism? While the fierceness of 
battling reveals the intensity of feeling so long en- 
gendered over slavery and its correlate, the "Right to 
Secede ;" this last, remember, was once but an inference 
born of the academic question of State sovereignty, as 
a construction of the constitution. 

Well, the war was on after the Bull Run disaster, 
no doubt about that. Both sides were aroused to the 
meaning, though not to the full measure of it all. The 
whole land was an armed camp, recruiting, drilling, 
marching, fighting. Victories and defeats came alter- 
nately; sometimes in one unbroken series. The men of 
the South, for evident reasons, took to the fighting line. 
Their officers were the picked men of West Point 
Academy, who entered at once into the war as if they 
had been long expecting this issue. 

At this late day I should be entirely dispassionate, 
and so be free to make these broad generalizations, viz. : 
That the Southern cause had enthusiam, preparedness 
and a high and gifted military generalship. The 
Federal cause had simply the holy thought of the 
Union, with greater resources of men and money. The 
Confederacy had the sympathy abroad of nations and 



13 



men, who, to say the least, dishked the Republic, and 
who would dare to break the blockade we had placed 
over that coast. Fortunately we were more fortunate 
in the naval spirit, as indeed the navy had been more 
national in its expression. Under the flag and in 
foreign waters there was less of the disunion feeling 
among the officers than in the army circles. 

I find, my dear friend, that this paper tends less 
to the personal you have so urged me to relate; but as 
I am never again to recount the war, its cause, con- 
tinuance and conclusion, nothing less than the fore- 
going could be said. You may have the narrative of 
the battles told you in the written histories of that 
period. Let this be now more as you have asked for 
it, as though we were all again before the open fire in 
that attractive library in your home. 

Of battles you can have the thrill of sensations more 
vividly described to you by men capable of reproducing 
these. Of marches, well, any old tramp can portray 
the same. I would rather in this paper set down, not 
in order, but as they come to mind, some certain in- 
cidents that have not lost their etching upon my 
memory. 

When that famous "change of base" was decided 
on by Gen. McClellan, I was ordered to destroy the 
stores at White House Landing prior to the movement, 
making a new base at Harrison's Landing. What was 
done in a few hours could help you see where the 
millions of cost that was distributed or evaporated. 
Quartermaster stores, commissary, forage, etc., all the 
impedimenta of a vast army, sanitary and medical sup- 



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plies b}' the trainload, etc., etc., together with a mighty- 
total of sutler's supplies. The destruction of this last, 
while not pitiful, was tearful to those disinterested 
patriots, the sutlers. You may see photos of some of 
the systematic methods Sherman's army used in de- 
struction. At White House it was a Chicago fire in 
volume and loss. The main purpose was to leave the 
enemy absolutely nothing in the way of salvage. One 
lone gunboat stood by us until the destruction was com- 
plete, and to stand oflf Jeb Stuart's eager, hungry 
wreckers. They and the sutlers were the only mourners 
at the moment. 

I would like to speak of the personality of some of 
the commanders I saw or knew : McClellan, Fitz-John 
Porter (my ideal), Butler (not my ideal), Meade, 
Miles, Dix, Ord, Custer, Sheridan and Grant. I had 
at times such an assorted variety of service that I came 
in touch with most of the above, but mention at length 
is here forbidden. 

One evening in March, 1865, I received orders from 
City Point to dismantle a bridge and throw it across 
at Deep Bottom to cross Gen. Sheridan in the morning. 
This was done with the help of a gunboat to anchor the 
bridge in the swift current, and in the morning Custer, 
with his riders, who had left Winchester just one 
month before, had swung through the state, and with 
Devins was pushing to our left. I had Custer as my 
guest while his command was passing. That night we 
replaced the pontoon back at Jones Landing and crossed 
Gen. Ord with the i8th Corps, also to the left. It was 
always to the left through two weeks to cut off Lee's 
retreat from Petersburg. Again it was a Sunday, just 



15 



a fortnight from the date of my former order — sud- 
denly a heavy explosion was heard from the direction 
of Richmond, twelve miles away; within a few hours 
another deep roar came down the wind, and then it 
was an easy guess what was going on. It was the 
enemy's gunboats being blown up preparatory to the 
evacuation of the long desired city. During the night 
yet another explosion and we were eager to move up 
and in at once. Some of my youngsters slipped away 
to be in at the death; they returned by noon of the next 
day with the sure word and mementoes of the fact that 
the way was open. I had been waiting for four years 
and now was as eager as any of my soldiers. Just then 
an order came from Gen. Grant to move the bridges up 
as fast as we could get rid of the torpedoes, for the 
upper river from Dutch Gap to the Rockets was full of 
these contrivances. I rode over the territory between 
our outer lines the twelve miles without meeting a soul, 
then suddenly reaching a hill top, lo, there was the city 
all in flames, so it seemed. The end was at hand and 
peace was only a question of hours. 

This was the ending of four years, the longest, full- 
est four years of my life. What that had meant to hun- 
dreds of thousands of homes and a half a million lives, 
who had felt the bitter cost, I may not even attempt to 
say. But the war was over. A braver foe was never 
met ; dogged, resourceful and hopeful, even when they 
knew, as some of their deserters used to put it, that 
"the dog zms dead." Von Moltke is reported to have 
called these armies, North and South, as an "armed 
mob." He never dreamed of such soldiers, for they 
don't grow them anywhere else. 



16 



I saw two men, the greatest of all that great epoch, 
one riding into his kingdom, and four years later the 
other sorrowfully riding out of his. On the morning 
of February 22, 1861, at sunrise of Washington's birth- 
day, I saw Abraham Lincoln raise the flag at Inde- 
pendence Hall in Philadelphia. Lincoln, the flag and 
Independence Hall on Washington's birthday. Do you 
measure the association it all meant to my eager soul 
that eventful reveille? Then one morning in April, 
1865, at Richmond, I met Gen. Robert E. Lee crossing 
my pontoon bridge to his home after all was over — the 
last vision of "The Lost Cause" this land should ever 
see. 

And between these dates it was all zvar. Imagine 
it as you may, and emphasize the word as you choose. 

From April, 1861, until 'I was mustered out in 
November, 1865, I was privileged to see much of men 
and movements. With McClellan on the peninsula to 
Harrison's Landing, and then after recovery in the 
autumn of 1862 recruiting my Battery "G" 3d Penn. 
Artillery. The spring campaign of 1863 began early, 
as Longstreet had us for a month at Suffolk "bottled 
up" while he was gathering all the possible supplies in 
that rich region and in preparation for the campaign 
that summer, which culminated at Gettysburg — the 
first real decisive victory, won by us in the East. My 
service the balance of that year carried me to the east- 
ern shore, to Getty's Station, and then through the 
winter on general court-martial duty. The spring of 
1864 arrived, with Gen. Grant in command in the East, 
forging, fighting, flanking through to the James River, 
each mile lengthening his base of supplies until the 
river was reached, when presto ! The case was reversed 
and Gen. Lee had to do the stretching. 

17 



One night in May, while waiting at Fort Monroe 
for active service, I was directed to take two hundred 
men on a night move under sealed orders, which were 
to capture the signal stations on the James River. A 
silent river since McClellan had sailed down it in July, 
1862. The orders above were carried out successfully 
and gave the Army of the James its opportunity to 
reach the upper waters and so make readiness for Grant 
when he should appear. 

I was then ordered to report to Admiral S. P. Lee, 
in command of the James River Division of the North 
Atlantic Blockading Squadron. It meant what was then 
a strange and mysterious work, the torpedo service. The 
torpedo to us was a weird and almost unknown factor 
in war, but familiarity with it did not breed contempt, 
kept us all in respectful attitude, for many were the 
scares that summer. 

At the beginning of the war I made my application 
personal to Secretary Welles of the Navy for an ap- 
pointment in the Marine Corps. It was conditionally 
promised, but never realized. However, I had the con- 
tact with the navy men I once desired, and with this 
finest group of naval heroes had one of the pleasantest 
experiences of my days of soldiering. These men, like 
Lee, Nichols, Beaumont, Fyffe, Calhoun, McCook, 
Miller, had learned the art and spirit of their calling 
under the Porters, Decaturs and Bainbridges of former 
days, and were in turn the preceptors of the Deweys, 
Clarkes and Sampsons of '98. 

By the autumn of '64 I had lost so many of my men 
through swamp duty and river work at night that I 
applied for a change of duty, and was given the pon- 



18 



toon service of the Army of Potomac and James. This 
held until the end was near, and at last, when Rich- 
mond was taken, we moved the bridges up the James 
River as fast as the torpedoes could be removed, and 
there remained until the close of May. In this pontoon 
service I crossed Sheridan's army as it swung down 
through Virginia on its way to round up things at the 
last, and while in Richmond the i8th and 25th Corps 
of Army of James, the 2d, 5th and 6th of Army of 
Potomac, and soon thereafter the 14th, 15th, 17th and 
20th of Sherman's forces, fresh from their hike through 
Georgia and the Carolinas. 

Early in June I was ordered back to Ft. Monroe, 
and until November, 1865, formed part of the garrison 
in charge of President Jefferson Davis, Mr. Clement C. 
Clay and John Mitchell. 

Before leaving Richmond let me relate an incident 
which I think gives in a flash a view of the state of 
men's minds in the Southern army at the immediate 
close of the war. We got the news of Mr. Lincoln's 
death on Monday following the Friday he was shot. 
Before that for days the city was full of the blue and 
gray, in all the honest appreciation each felt for the 
other. 

That Monday not a Confederate was seen. The feel- 
ing was so intense. But that afternoon with some 
officers in passing we dropped in at a quiet saloon and 
there found three Confederate officers. Of course I 
looked for trouble at once. When one of these turned 
and in that pleasant voice of theirs said: "I see you are 
a Federal officer ! Will you allow me to join with you 
in sincerest sorrow over the death of 'our' President? 



19 



Think of it! He added, "I am a Georgian Colonel from 
Gen, Johnston's army and have had four years of this 
all, and am now on my way home to turn to my farm." 

(Cleves, I believe that was the heart feeling of every 
true man in the South regarding Mr. Lincoln, and 
would have obviated all the accursed misrule and hor- 
rors of the carpet bag regime.) 

I found Mr. Davis looking as you have his picture. 
It has been remarked of him that he was strong in his 
likes and dislikes of men. He greeted me most pleas- 
antly, and ever after that when I came on duty as officer 
of the day and was required to see the prisoners every 
two hours until "Grand Rounds," I was made cordially 
welcome. Often in the evening, after the posts were 
visited, I would spend the two hours with him (he had 
some good cigars), and then his conversation opened 
up freely and found me a good listener. He would 
not speak of the war, or of the prominent figures in it, 
but mainly of his memories of the time when he was in 
the Senate, and of the Mexican war. It was of vast 
fascination to me all this history of a period when the 
central figures were household names. I may also men- 
tion that he gave me earnest talks on religion, for he 
was a devout man, and I was almost a pagan. For this 
and his practical advice I fervently am grateful. 

Mr. C. C. Clay, Jr., also prisoner along with Mr.- 
Davis, I recall as a charming personality, to whom it 
was a pleasure to be of any service. On leaving him 
in November he gave me a two dollar Confederate note 
which had a good likeness of him as a vignette. On the 
back he had written these pleasant words : "Capt. San- 



20 



derson, God grant you may never need the kindness 
you have shown me in deed, 

"C. C. Clay, Jr., Huntsville, Ala." 

And now the war was over and we were homeward 
bound, to take up the new life of citizenship. It is all 
a far. cry from those forty or fifty years ago to now 
— from soldier life to pastorate — from that sunny South- 
land to this Northwest — from an artilleryman to a 
Presbyterian. I am glad and grateful for the experi- 
ences that happened, and which did not destroy me; 
for the associations formed ; for the ventures safely met ; 
but most of all, that as the war was possibly inevitable, 
it did bring in such blessed results, that I personally 
was a unit in the mass, and to-day with a vivid recollec- 
tion of it all. 

Cleves, the nation is now for you and the men who 
are to enlarge it and lift it to its divine place in the 
evident purpose of our God. 

Thanking you for provoking me to try and tell the 
story of that wonder era in human history, I am. 

Affectionately your friend, 

Joseph W. Sanderson, D. D., 
Late Capt. "G" Battery 3d Pa. Arty. 

Beaver Dam, Wis., April, 1907. 



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